Would you go back?

The last several weeks have been unstable in several Northern African countries to say the least. First came an uprising in Tunisia, then Egypt and now Libya leaving thousands of Canadians caught up in the middle of it including North Bay’s Georgia Villeneuve. A grade six teacher with the Canadian National School of Egypt for the past 5 months, Villeneuve evacuated from Cairo the first week of February.

BayToday had the opportunity to talk with Villeneuve last week about the events that led up to her evacuation and the difficult decision she had to make on whether to return to Egypt or not.

She describes the events of the uprising as a slow build until the need for her exodus.

“What I didn’t realise is there was there are 15 students in my class. I think on Sunday all the class was there on Tuesday missing a couple, by Wednesday I was missing 5 kids for the last three days, so that made me think something’s up.”

“The kids were just bonkers. In talking to other teachers you would say how are your kids, is it a full moon, what’s going on -- they were just uncontrollable,” she explains.

“So in retrospect you kind of think wow they’re unnerved from whatever is happening at home cause their parents are worried about something. So missing that many kids was the first sign, we figured they headed for Sharma Shake or left the country or whatever right … so we knew there was going to be protests just didn’t know how big.”

Given that things were heating up she took a few precautionary steps just in case.

“Thursday, we watched Al-Jazeera and things and that is when the guns started so from one of our balconies we were about 10 miles away from downtown so we could smoke and see flares from machine guns and hear them all night long.”

“It was our payday too so I went to the bank and got lots of money out … I already had the money because I didn’t know what was going to happen but I figured whatever happens have money.”

From there she explains that the protests didn’t let up in fact things got more intense as phones and internet went down and curfews were put in place and her neighbourhood had started the road blocks.

“The cell phones were down on the Friday and their internet was down, so then the level goes up then you are just watching Al-Jazeera hearing flares and machine guns.”

“The street gets completely quiet, traffic stops I think that is when the curfew started … first curfew was at 4 o’clock I think, so of course everyone went shopping got supplies.”

“It was kind of exciting in some ways because friends would drop by because nobody had a cell phone or anything, so people would just show up and it would be these impromptu like hey how’s it going … and people sort of eating together and sharing things and information.”

When phone service came back on Saturday she says it was a scrambled to get what information they could on the situation.

“It was weird there was hardly any traffic at all so that was strange. And the milk and bread were running out in the grocery stores and that kind of thing, but still enough vegetables and supplies but then you are kind of house bound and by 4 o’clock it was dead quiet except for machine guns in the background.”

She says while she felt safe during the day the nights were a different story. A neighbourhood watch was in place with people patrolling the area with crude weapons like sticks, rocks and homemade machetes.

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